symmetal

Interesting. It looks like the QHY has the meaning of the USB Traffic slider reversed, compared to the ZWO. QHY 0 is Zwo 40% and QHY 60 is Zwo 100%. The Zwo figure represents what percentage of the available USB bandwidth can be used by the camera. 🙂 Also @Dave Smith, I forgot to say that they are excellent images.🤗 While reducing the ROI width won't affect the camera fps, it will give a smaller file size, so if you have a bottleneck in writing to disk, then reducing the ROI width can help you maintain the camera fps. If you have an SSD for storage, then this won't be an issue. 🙂 Alan

Also, concerning using a ROI, it's only reducing the ROI height that will improve your frame rate. ROI width has no effect on the frame rate as the sensor is read out line by line and ROI line cropping is done afterwards. As you have to do a 2 panel mosaic, reduce the ROI height as much as you can while leaving a reasonable overlap. I have gamma set to minimum (1) when focusing as it improves the image contract, but always remember to turn it off before capturing. I have a 60mm Lunt, and luckily the Sun just fits on full frame with the ASI178. 😊 Alan

The tips by Nicolàs are useful, though I think he meant to say try raising the USB traffic setting. 🙂 I use Firecapture and you can access these settings by clicking on the 'More' button in the Control section. I manage 40fps full frame with my ASI178 at high speed enabled and 30fps if disabled. At USB traffic minimum (40%) I only get 11fps and I find it's fine at 100% where I get the 40fps. For large format cameras you can get missing images or errors at 100% but it's fine with smaller sensors. Also disable gamma when capturing, or set it at 50 which is the same thing. Gamma processing takes a lot of processor time so drops your frame rate. Alan

Someone has already posted the MosaicByCoordinates problem on the PI forum and it has been confirmed as a bug and will be fixed ASAP. 🙂 I've left PI 8.1.9-2 installed on my backup PC for testing, and when the issues have been resolved will update my main PC again. Alan

The ImageSolver script has had an update in the new version to be more accurate, and the text output info is very different. I reinstalled the older PI version, which then needed 27 updates to be reinstalled, 😐 and running MosaicByCoords it failed right away with a co-ord error message. I reran the ImageSolver on the two panels, assuming it would be the old version of ImageSolver but it was still the new one. 😬 However running MosaicByCoords again it now worked OK. Phew! Alan

I installed the recently released PI 1.8.9-2 update and there are a number of issues with some scripts now not working, primarily 3rd party addons. MosaicByCoords is now failing with a 'resWindow is null'. message. I'm waiting for approval to post on the PI forum, and noticed plenty of issues with the new update posted, so it may be worth waiting a while before installing it. Alan

Plenty of detail there Göran. 🙂 It looks like the horse head is detached so it could be called the Godfather Nebula. Alan

Quite a spectacular difference. 🙂 No way you'd say they were the same data. I notice the red area at the bottom right in the DSLR image is much more muted in your reprocess though. DBE points? 😉 Alan

If you spend for example, 4 hours in total capturing your target, you can either spend 1 hour each of LRGB of 1 hr 20 min each of RGB. The result with luminance will have a better overall S/N as luminance gathers photons around 3 x quicker than the individual colour filters do. However, if your scope isn't well colour corrected adding luminance will likely give a slightly softer result and also with more bloated stars, which is what you might have experienced. If you're happy to spend the longer total imaging time with just RGB to achieve a similar S/N as you would get if you captured luminance as well, then RGB alone will give you a better result. Many people use OSC cameras nowadays with excellent results and they have no luminance added of course, so it's not really necessary nowadays as you say. Before CMOS came along with more efficient, and lower read noise sensors, adding luminance would certainly have been the better choice. 🙂 If using a OSC camera though, an APO is preferable, as you can't refocus for the different colours. Alan

Yes, your thinking is correct as far as RGB and especially narrowband filters are concerned. The only issue is if you also want to take luminance frames where the APO scope will give sharper results. Alan

That's true for mechanical analogue meters, and digital meters if it's sampling at a frequency sufficiently greater than the ac frequency being measured and averaging many samples. I expect the ASIAir output voltage sampling frequency will be lower than the PWM frequency as it's only intended for DC measuring, so aliasing effects will make any displayed reading incorrect, even if it averages over several samples. Probably easier for the ASIAir not to display it. 🙂 Alan

As the dew heaters are most likely PWM driven the voltage displayed would be continuously flickering between 0V and 12V depending on what phase of the PWM cycle they were sampled when being measured. Displaying the PWM mark to space ratio as a percentage is a better indication of the actual power being delivered to the dew heaters. Alan

Anybody remember Science Fiction Monthly, a UK large format ( around A3 size) magazine published from 1974 to 1976. It specialized in many full page pictures of art created by those mentioned above and others. I think I bought every volume including the binders to protect them. Not sure what happened to them. Probably lost during several house moves. 😪 Alan

Does M27 look clipped in your individual subs? If so, then your exposures are too long, or the camera gain is too high. I assume you're using gain 100 where HCG kicks in. This is also unity gain as well, so that should be a good gain setting to use. If the subs are clipped at this gain setting then a shorter exposure would be beneficial, say 120 secs. Alan

Still here. 🙂 Alan

Easily done. 😊 It won't change the final colours as such, just put them in different areas which is why it looks weird. Time for a take 2. 😁 Alan

The middle is the 'golden' colour, it's just low intensity. Use the standard 'curves' control to brighten the middle range of the image. Also, using the Hue selection on the 'curves' you can move selected colour ranges in a direction which looks better. Alan

As you have a mono camera then that's great. The tutorial is quite easy to follow so you should be fine. Post your results. 🙂 Alan

The SHO application to RGB is just the first step and a lot more image processing is needed to get the blue/gold colours. I found this tutorial for SHO processing in PI very useful and was what I used to process my Pelican Nebula. I think these are more the colours you were hoping for. 🙂 It looks like you're using a modded DSLR with a dual band filter, so HOO processing may be more applicable to you, unless you also use a separate SII filter. Alan

I just checked and none of the links on that page works. 😟 Google translate reports that the page is in Ukrainian so that's understandable at the moment. 😬 Edit: You can download the catalogue from VizieR and use the catalogue generator in CdC to create a CdC compatible one. After selecting the FTP tab, you just need to download the ReadMe file to show the table headings, and table13.dat downloaded as a txt file, which includes the RA/Dec coordinates for each entry. It seems the majority of entries are in the southern hemisphere though. 🤔 Alan

That's quite spectacular. It looks like there's a little bug with antennae, coming towards you, just above the pillars. 😁 Alan

The list of catalogues compiled by Oleg Maliy on the CdC website does include the 7th catalogue of Wolf-Rayet stars (2001) under the Spectroscopic data section. 🙂 Alan

I've given it another go to see how far it can be pushed. Probably gone too far here. 😁 The dark band near the bottom is on your original data and is likely the flats not quite matching. Alan

In PixInsight I use Star Exteminator (star removal) as the last step on the linear data, after dynamic background extraction, blur exterminator, noise exterminator and photo metric colour calibation (with background neutralization). I then stretch the background with Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch, and stretch the separate stars image slightly in GHS with emphasis on preserving colour similar to an arcsinh stretch. These are saved as 16 bit tiff files to load into PS where the stars are added in to the background as a separate layer using 'Screen' blend mode. Then final adjustments using curves and satutration in PS, separately on the two layers to get the final look before the layers are combined into a finished image. 🙂 To make DBE in PI easier, I do star removal to give just the background so DBE points can be added quickly without having to worry about stars being in the points. After DBE has done its magic I add the stars back in before continuing with the rest of the linear processing. I'm not sure if starnet++ will work on linear data, in which case a partial stretch may be required before using it. Alan

Here's my quick go with PI and PS. 🙂 It looks like I wasn't careful enough with DBE as the bottom of the image has a darkish band running across it and the centre is a bit blue. I hope that gives you some idea of what's there. Alan